U.S. Pat. No. 4,259,375 (Vassiliou - 1981) discloses an article of cookware with a 3-layer coating having a discontinuous speckled or spattered pattern in a partial layer directly beneath the topcoat. The spattered coating is deliberately sprayed directly on an underlying layer while this layer is still wet and soft so that the spattered layer sinks into the under layer thereby forming a smooth finish. The spattered layer dots were also sprayed on directly, such as at 90 degrees from the substrate, so as to form generally round dots.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,194,336 (Yamada- 1993) and 5,106,682 (Matsushita et al - 1992) disclose using mica particles coated with interference thicknesses of various oxides, especially TiO2, to obtain different colors in cookware coatings. These patents confirm that it was conventionally believed that interference colors mix to form other colors following additive color rules as do lights from different sources, e.g., red plus green forms yellow. In additive color mixing the interference pigments produce color by the interference of reflected light. This is in contrast to subtractive color mixing affects obtained with reflective pigments wherein color is achieved by the partial absorbance of incident light so that red plus green would form a muddy brown. A discussion of additive and subtractive color mixing is disclosed in Paint and Surface Coatings: Theory and Practice, Ed. R. Lambourne, John Wiley & Sons, p.185, and Industrial Color Technology, R. M. Johnson and M. Saltzman, Advances in Chemistry Series 107, American Chemical Society, p.8 (1971).
The disclosure oft he aforementioned patents and publications is hereby incorporated by reference.